Fundamentally the question of drone design requires us to know what is the particular use case(s) we want to put them to. We k now this about drones:
Drones otherwise known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are small-sized aircraft with no need of a pilot commanding them. UAV is divided into three categories based on its wing shape and body structure; fixed-wing, rotary wing (rotorcrafts), and flapping.
Quadcopter is one kind of UAV that falls into the rotary-wing category and is lifted and propelled by four motors
One of the deliverables of the research is to assemble a drone using an existing and reliable drone chassis and fit it with computational and computer vision capacities. A brief review of types of drone kits available shows that
There are two main classes of DIY drone kits in the market: RTF and ATF. • RTF drones mean Ready to fly drones. • ARF drones mean Almost ready to fly drones • We identified 4 of the most popular drone kits for comparison. • DJI Mavic mini • Robocat Co-Co 280 • Qwinout Series • DJI F450. These different chassis are shown in Figure A
To determine the choice a couple of parameters needs to be considered shown in Table 1:
Table 1: COMPARISON BETWEEN THE AFOREMENTIONED DRONES
Based on the information presented in the table it was recommended that we go with DJI Mavic mini because of the superior features it has over the others. It has a longer flight time and it can cover a longer distance which will be important in a surveillance situation.
Since surveillance and monitoring is what we have in mind it is pertinent to develop a system in which drones can be automatically recharged after a flight, we are compelled to study temperature changes in drones due to flight as this poses to be a possible challenge. Drone batteries are known to heat up after flight. We wanted to investigate the extent of the heating of a drone in flight, as a way of understanding how to mitigate its impact. The result is shown graphically in figure 2
Figure 2: Graph showing temperature rise with number of minutes drone has been in flight
The graph in Figure 2, shows the temperature of a drone (Tello) taken after every one minute. It shows that the higher the speed of the drone the lower the temperature of the drone. After a test the newly inserted battery takes the temperature of the just concluded flight as its initial temperature. Hence it shows an increase in temperature. Finally, it is gathered that temperature is a factor we have to consider if we are going to have a system in which drones can recharge automatically because excessive rise in temperature can affect the entire circuit of the drone while charging